New Delhi, March 26 (IANS): Two people have been arrested by police for tricking people into checking their Instagram accounts, a police officer said on Saturday.
According to the Instagram social networking service, a verified badge is a blue check mark that appears next to an Instagram account name in search and on the profile.
This means that Instagram has confirmed that an account is the authentic presence of the public figure, celebrity, or brand it represents.
The official said a woman filed a complaint at Cyber Police Station, Dwarka alleging that her son was cheated by unknown fraudsters out of Rs 14,400.
She said her 15-year-old son got a cellphone number to verify his Instagram account. When his son contacted this number, the caller asked him to deposit Rs 6,000 through UPI.
Subsequently, his son was again forced to deposit Rs 5,700 as his account was blocked. The third time, the fraudsters demanded Rs 2,700 more to continue their action.
As the complainant’s son realized he had been cheated, he demanded his money back, however, the alleged persons refused to pay the amount and blocked it.
Accordingly, based on this complaint, the police registered a case under Section 420 (deceit and dishonest inducement to deliver goods) of the Indian Penal Code and initiated the investigation.
During the investigation, details of beneficiaries of alleged fraudulent transactions were obtained from PhonePe, UPI and Kotak Mahindra Bank.
Based on technical analysis, a police team raided the Pitampura and Rohini area and apprehended an accused Shivam Dev (19), a first-year undergraduate student, and at his request the second accused Shubham Kumar (21), who is said to be the mastermind of the scam was also caught.
During questioning, the two defendants revealed that they were looking for Instagram users whose accounts were unverified.
Afterwards, they messaged them through different IDs to verify their accounts.
Whenever a user showed interest, they would request money through UPI and once the money was received, they would block senders.
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